Abstract

The Bureau of Labor Statistics embarked on the Job Openings and
Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) in 1999. The JOLTS collects total
employment, job openings, hires, quits, layoffs and discharges, other
separations, and total separations data. JOLTS initially used the interquartile
method to detect outliers for each characteristic. The list
of schedules with potential outliers was reviewed by analysts who determined
which schedules were to be treated as atypicals because the
value of one or more characteristics was not considered representative
of the population. There are several statistical issues associated with the
initial method. We discuss a new procedure to address these issues. The
new approach uses the Winsorization method.